Manchego - home making recipe with Ph markers

[JayW]

Ok ... time to put an end to this ... If it. hadn't been for the rant I probably would have just left it alone and moved on.. Yes, ... I do look through the forum periodically but rarely Jump in to the conversation.. A lot I read here is great and Iv'e made a few good friends here over the years.

This one just tripped that urge. The phrase "Snobby Ignorance" is not often a term directed my way. So that changed things with a response.

I myself have gotten notices from various cheese protectors/regulators like the folks at Stilton and learned not to do that. In 20 years of visiting traditional cheese makers around the world I have learned a respect for regional cheese ... much of this comes at night over a bottle of wine with them .. and seeing just how hard they work

first off.. If you are a home cheesemaker, you can call it anything you like, However here I have a problem myself passing the cheese out with the name of Manchego and it's reference to the the Manchega Sheep as well as the region of La Mancha.. when its made with Cows milk. It comes from a historical timeline.
In Spain I became fascinated by their 'Dehesa' (the Shepards Highways). I have had several cheesemakers introduce me to their shepards and talk of the history of this. I still see Shepards today, moving their sheep/goat mix daily to these grazing grounds. Even today the streets are closed in Madrid on one Sunday every October to move the flocks through the center of the city to honor this tradition... Now thats tradition.

The quote here from the request for designation, I'm pretty sure comes from Senor Canut or his camp..
"Considering that the cheeses made from mixtures of sheep, cow and goat milk, called in these standards "Hispánico", "Ibérico" and "De la Mesta", have well-differentiated characteristics and have reached sufficient importance, it seems appropriate to issue the referred standards of composition and specific characteristics"
... The point is to keep the distinction between the real deal and the commercial ones such as those substituting cow for ewes milk.

In contrast Feta type cheeses were made not just in Greece but all over that part of Eastern Europe and Feta so that was not hard to understand when Greece tried to protect the name. Others like roquefort, Comte, etc deserve the designation.
A very interesting cheese is the Bitto in northern Italy .. the locals practically went to war over that one ... look up 'Bitto Historica' .. i comes from the Valtallina in northern Italy

At any rate I think I've said enough on this for now.. Mornduk other than the rant, a pretty nice piece, y'all can get back on track now.

.... JWALLACE@CROCKER.COM

[mikekchar]

Sorry.  I misunderstood your rant.  If you are arguing that "Hispanico" as "Cow Manchego" is just as bad as calling it "Manchego" in the first place, I'm totally on board.  But also, sorry for participating in the derailment.

[Boofer]

Whew! What a spirited discussion!

To maintain my sense of what I've created, I need to differentiate between a cheese made with sheep milk and one using a similar technique but made with cow milk. Hey, what's in a name? A cheese by any other name would taste as sweet. (Apologies to W. Shakespeare).

I love photo essays. Yours was wonderful, enlightening, and educational.
Beautiful work, Mornduk. Have a cheese.

-Boofer-

[Mornduk]

I chatted with Jim last week and we agreed to disagree. He thinks that is the right name according to his experience. I think I provided proof that 1) the word is not used, and 2) the PDO for Hispánico requires at least 30% ewe's milk -so you can't use it for a 100% cow milk product and claim you respect PDOs at the same time.

I wanted to clarify that we both think a traditional Manchego is a superior product and we love it that way. My family on the mother's side has been producing it for generations and it's the cheese I was raised into, -that's why I don't like people gatekeeping it unnecessarily while they don't gatekeep Gouda or Camembert, for example.

Again my rant came after I saw a couple of snobby jerks in social media gatekeeping and publicly shaming some first-time cheesemakers who were happily posting about their "Manchego", so I went on to ridicule them here as I couldn't do it in the original archived discussion, and I went fully into it. I was not directing it to Jim as he might have thought, in my eyes he's worked for decades to bring new home cheesemakers in, not to scare them out, so he's the opposite of those bullies.

Regardless, the original jerks will never read the post anyway since they are not the kind of people I have read posting here during the past 10+ years. Because the internet is an asynchronous place, someone in the future might again mistakenly think I was referring to Jim or someone else here, so to avoid that I will edit out the juicy parts of my rant and just leave the facts. If someone wants to read the original she can always use the way-back machine or similar archives.

Mike, a thread derailed is given new life and engagement, so no need to apologize. After all I won't open this cheese for at least 6 months (if it doesn't age well), probably 1-2 years.... I was just worried that the discussion was heating up unnecessarily

[mikekchar]

I feel bad mostly because now that my reading comprehension problem has been fixed, I agree with you :-)  Naming is such a difficult problem because you run that line between communicating intent and communicating facts.  It's a bit silly to say, "I'm making a cheese that is often made with milk from a certain breed of sheep, but I'm using cows milk and there are other cheeses that may or may not use cows milk completely.  Oh and by the way the original cheese is from Spain and looks cool".  Even the wrong name is better than that :-)

Somewhat interestingly, inspired by Jim's imeruli recipe, I've been going in a deep dive of that style of cheese.  A coworker of mine lives in Georgia (remote working) and his girlfriend is from Imereti so I'm getting some guidance from them.  But I don't really feel even remotely right in calling my cheese imeruli -- I've never tasted the cheese before!  It's all very confusing...

Anyway, I've been enjoying your posts quite a lot here and on reddit, so please post more :-D

[Chetty]

Process

• pH targets: start 6.7-6.8, rennet 6.5-6.65, whey pitch 6.2-6.3, brine. 
  
  Stir slowly in an 8 pattern until you hit pH 6.3,
  

I have one question on the recipe, was the ph measurement whey or curd.   I drained at 6.35 today and It dropped to 5.12 in the press in 5 hours.  My batch was 80 gallons in 6 wheels so there was some heat in the wheels to keep the bacteria active.  But i was curious as to what measurement you go off of. 

[Mornduk]

I have one question on the recipe, was the ph measurement whey or curd.   I drained at 6.35 today and It dropped to 5.12 in the press in 5 hours.  My batch was 80 gallons in 6 wheels so there was some heat in the wheels to keep the bacteria active.  But i was curious as to what measurement you go off of.

I go for whey pH until press, then curd in the wheel to check when it's done and ready for the brine. I tried measuring curd pH vs whey pH before draining the whey and putting the curd in the form and they're always just 0.1 apart from me so it wasn't worth it. If yours dropped so fast most likely culprit is press temp being high, you can drop it a bit or check earlier next time. Those are also really big wheels so I'd pull at 0.1-0.2 higher pH as they'll remain active in the brine longer. I'd love to see the pictures

[Chetty]

I didnt follow your recipe exactly, but I was using it as a loose guide.  I dont brine I dry salt.  I molded up at 6.42 but pressed under whey till 6.35. 

[fattyacid]

I didnt follow your recipe exactly, but I was using it as a loose guide.  I dont brine I dry salt.  I molded up at 6.42 but pressed under whey till 6.35.

Hey, cool to see you posting here! Your cheese will be fine. Next time either start your culture temp 2 degrees cooler or finish your cook  about 3 degrees cooler and you will finish with a terminal pH of 5.3ish.

Kendall in Idaho

[Chetty]

I'll give it a go, I only make this style once every other month so I'll keep it in mind for may.